Newsletter May 2000

After
the excitement of the birthday party, we have to nurse the hangover and
get on with the rest of the year. The headache isnt helped by mixing
an up-tempo club/techno version of BETTYs
Jungle Jane, a seven minute free MP3
extravaganza featuring several new sets of lyrics from the fabulous Alyson
Palmer and her earrings, delivered about two inches in front of your nose.
This mix complements James Rosenthals (which we put up in free
MP3 last month). Its much faster and its very different.
Mike Thorne adds the story of his
production to the collection, glad to be back in danceland.

The
studio was busy this month, with Sarah
Jane Morris contributing vocals and song-writing to Thornes
forthcoming CD, which will be dance-oriented and feature extended songs
as long as nine minutes. Three New York dates were nixed at the last minute,
thanks to someones scheduling confusion (not ours, pal), but she
still came over and made loud, tuneful noises. Her new album is now released
in the US, the reason for the original dates which were to have been at
CBGBs, Barracuda and the Tonic Club. We hope shell be able
to return, possibly in June. Weve added a few recent reviews.

Alyson
Palmer is the BETTY whose idea
grew into the Carnival, er, concept.
Typically, she wrote a thorough initial treatment, and we now publish
this little story. Its
even scary on your screen.

For
those of you who missed BETTY's
NPR interview, we have it available for streaming in RealAudio and
Liquid Audio. The interview aired on Saturday, March 4, 2000 on Weekend
Edition with Scott Simon.

The
Stereo Society made several experimental
virtual reality panoramas in 1995/6,
for Warner Music International. Rather than just stick to pretty, scenic
surroundings, we created some spaces which certainly dont exist
in the real world, embedded in a tour of the studio as it then was. Click
on the monitor screens in the control room to find Alice in Wonderland
or to visit the lyric room.

The
QTVR files are playable with Apples QuickTime application on Mac
and PC. The file is quite large, slightly over 7 Mb, but seemed worth
posting as an inspired curiosity. There are several panoramas, and you
must find the hot spot to travel from one to the other and to navigate
through the different studio areas.

The
Mixman competition finalists are all selected, and the final judging will
be announced in next months Newsletter. Looks like Stereo Society
vinyl is coming. We will be preparing several further tracks in the Mixman
format, for release later this year. And they wont just be the obvious
dance numbers.